On December 13, 2010 twenty-four Running Start Alumni addressed the hundreds gathered at the No Labels Launch in New York City. Read their statement below!

“As alumni of Running Start’s Political Leadership programs, we are encouraged to run for office as a direct way to bring about positive change. But how can we be inspired to participate in government when politicians are most concerned with appealing to their own party rather than addressing the real issues?

We support No Labels because we believe in the power of politics. If we want to see results from our government, we need to be less caught up in who wears red and who wears blue and remember we share a common purpose.

We believe it is time for us to take a stand and remind our elected officials and even ourselves that partisan fighting cannot be tolerated; that our commonalities run deeper that our differences; and that we owe it to our children and our grandchildren to find a way to leave this country better than we found it.

No Labels is about working together to come up with comprehensive solutions to the problems affecting our communities and our world. No Labels is about changing politics so that it pays to put every idea on the table, debate them on their merits, improve them, and then pass the ones that would do the most good. As Running Start alumni who are interested in political service, we see No Labels as the first step towards bringing politics back to what we know it can be: a way to change the world for the better. “